Moore's Law unnatural, proclaims Intel CEO

Posted January 8, 2010 - 06:31
by
Sylvie Barak in Las Vegas

It took Intel CEO Paul Otellini only about a minute to mention Moore’s Law in his CES keynote on Thursday, remarking that the ‘law’ was “not a law of nature, but a law that reflects human inventiveness.”

“Every two years we schedule a breakthrough,” said the Intel premiere, noting that each one of these breakthroughs cost approximately 12 billion dollars a step and took six years of hard work and planning.

And where has all that hard work and planning led to? Well, like almost everything else at CES this year, it would appear Intel too is focusing on the television and bringing video to as many screens around the home as possible.

“HD has been a key driver for the industry in the last two years,” said Otellini, adding that “3D television is the next thing poised to explode.”

“Today many of us are viewing HD at home,” said the Intel CEO, maintaining that increasingly sports, films and other television shows were now being filmed in 3D too.

“The good news for us in the hardware side of the industry is that 3D content requires a tonne of computing,” he said.

“We see 3d moving from the studio to the home and we’re providing the compute horse power to do that.”

Indeed, posited Otellini, 3D is so fantastical, that soon we’d all want to be making our own 3D content at home, which would, of course, require a Core i7 Extreme processor.

But content, warned the Intel chief, was only one part of the whole equation, as people sought to share their creations and favourite 3D content between screens.

“There is a growing need to interconnect devices in the home,” he proclaimed, before dismissing the upcoming USB 3.0 standard in favour of Intel’s new baby, LightPeak.

“Lightpeak means you can download an entire Blu -ray movie in less than 30 seconds,” enthused Otellini, but even that wasn’t enough for Intel’s connected standards.

“We see wifi moving into everything,” he said unveiling Intel’s new wireless display (Wi-Di) technology, which can beam content from one’s Core i5 and above directly to the TV using a wireless HDMI dongle which will be available at Best Buy starting next week.

Otellini went on to demo a Sodaville (Atom) based TV similar to those shown off at IDF a few months back, as well as several other “home devices” powered by the little chip, including a rather handy looking “Intel energy home dashboard” to monitor all the energy consumption inside the home.

“Just like phones are becoming smart phones, TVs are becoming smart TVs,” Otellini remarked, concluding that “computing in the home is going to be a lot more than just the PC.”